


Old Friends

by xenoglossy



Category: Love Live! School Idol Project
Genre: F/F, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-08-09 22:14:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7819255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xenoglossy/pseuds/xenoglossy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Without meaning to, Maki drifted away from Nico after high school--until she saw the posters for Nico's idol debut.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old Friends

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Plaid_Slytherin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Plaid_Slytherin/gifts).



Maki had never meant to lose touch with Nico. μ's was supposed to mean the nine of them forever, together no matter what, right? She'd wanted to believe in that, but then most of them had graduated before her and scattered across the country, and she'd been up to her neck in entrance exam prep and then the exams themselves, and after she'd gotten into university she had all her classes and labs and homework.... And so the emails and phone calls between her and the others had gotten fewer and farther between, and with some exceptions (Honoka would never allow a friend to stop talking to her), Maki hadn't heard from most of them in a while.

So the poster kind of blindsided her.

She’d nearly walked past it at first--it was just another of the dozens of nearly-identical idol singer posters that had graced the window of the CD store near campus. But some part of her brain went _hey, wait a second_ , and she turned around and looked again. And there it was, staring her in the face: Nico Yazawa’s idol debut, single on sale next week.

On some stupid impulse, she fished her phone out of her bag and called Nico. The phone rang a few times, and just as Maki was starting to worry that Nico had changed her number or something, Nico picked up.

“Hello?” She sounded sort of suspicious.

“Uh, hey, Nico? It’s Maki.”

“I know, stupid, your number is still in my phone.”

“I, uh, I saw an ad for your single, so--”

“Oh, I see how it is,” Nico interrupted. “You haven’t spoken to me in nearly a year, but now that I’m about to become mega-famous and captivate the hearts of the entire nation, if not the world, suddenly you want to be friends again. Well, if you think I’m falling for that, you can think again!”

“Nico--” Maki began, but Nico had hung up before Maki could even finish saying her name.

 _Idiot_ , Maki thought angrily, not sure whether she meant herself or Nico.

* * *

Nico called back, of course. Not immediately, because that would have been as good as admitting she’d been in the wrong, but later that evening.

“I’m very busy right now promoting my single,” she said, with no preamble, “but if you really want to see me and congratulate me on my success, I can _probably_ fit you in the week after next.”

“I didn’t say I wanted to see you.”

“Oh, well, then, I’ll just--”

“No, wait,” Maki said quickly, having the strong suspicion that Nico was about to hang up again. “I didn’t mean... that is...” Obviously she couldn’t say _I did want to see you, it just annoys me when you assume this stuff_ , so she floundered for a moment and then gave up. “The week after next sounds great. Do you want to get coffee? There’s a pretty good place near my apartment. They have great pastries.”

“Hmm, let me see...” said Nico, dragging out a pause as if she really had to look hard for a vacancy in her crowded schedule. Which, she probably _was_ very busy, but she was definitely also playing it up. “I can fit you in on Thursday between 2 and 3 PM.”

“I have class then. Can you do 3:30?”

There was another probably-longer-than-necessary pause. “I guess that can be arranged.”

“Great,” Maki said. “See you then.”

* * *

Nico showed up at the cafe wearing dark glasses and a large hat, which only served to make her more conspicuous.There were murmurs and unsubtle glances from the other patrons as she made her way, fancy coffee in one hand and a small plate of macarons in the other, over to the table where Maki was sitting.

“Is all that disguise stuff really necessary?” Maki asked when Nico sat down.

“It’s nice to see you too,” Nico said, setting her things down with slightly excessive force. “And yes, it _is_ necessary. I’ve got a reputation to uphold now, you know. What if some paparazzi type took pictures of us and people thought it was a date? The scandal might destroy me.”

“It’s not a date, though. You’re just getting coffee with an old friend, right?”

“ _Obviously_ , but who knows what stupid assumptions people might make?”

“Your single came out a week ago. Are you really that popular already?”

“Oh, like you’d know anything about how the business works,” Nico scoffed. “How many weeks have _you_ spent on the Oricon charts?”

Maki rolled her eyes. “Of course, I can’t possibly understand your life as an idol. It’s not like I was ever an idol myself, right?”

“Well, if _you_ act like you’ve forgotten that ever happened, you can’t blame other people for doing the same, can you?”

“I do not act like--” Maki began, and then had the good sense to shut her mouth. She hadn’t invited Nico out just to bicker the whole time, had she? Or, well, all right, bickering was probably inevitable, but this wasn’t feeling as friendly as she’d envisioned. “Look,” she tried, “why don’t we just... focus on catching up with each other. Like we originally planned to, right?”

“Okay,” said Nico, although it didn’t seem like she was eager to start.

“So, the idol thing,” Maki said, “I mean, that’s pretty amazing. I know it’s what you’ve always wanted.”

“It _is_ amazing, isn’t it?” Nico said, hastily adding, “Not that I ever doubted it was going to happen.”

Maki bit back a sarcastic response and instead said, “More than any of us, you’ve always been the one with star power.”

“Exactly,” she said, which was as close to ‘thank you’ as she was likely to get. “So, what about you?”

Maki blinked. “What about me?”

“How is studying biology? Everything you hoped it would be?”

Maki looked down at her coffee, as if its murky depths might contain the answer to the question and not just a bunch of sludgy sugar. “It’s fine?”

“Oh, c’mon, what kind of answer is that?”

“Well, it’s not--I was never passionate about it like you were about being an idol. I like it okay, and I’m good at it. But...”

“But you miss music, don’t you.”

“I... yeah, I do. I mean, I don’t know if I’d even want to try to turn it into a career, I’m happy to just have it as a hobby, but I don’t really have a lot of free time to work on compositions, and that’s only going to get worse the farther I get in my studies, not to mention when I actually start my career.”

“If you ever decide to quit school, you can write some smash hits for me,” Nico said. “The stuff they’re giving me these days isn’t nearly as good as what you used to do for μ's.”

“... Thank you,” said Maki, genuinely touched and kind of annoyed at the same time.

They made small talk for a while longer, and then an alarm went off on Nico’s phone.

“Sorry, gotta go,” she said. “I’ve got a very important meeting. We’re planning my next single.”

“Well, I won’t keep you, then. I should be heading back anyway, I’ve got an evening lecture.”

“I _might_ be able to find the time to do this again,” Nico said, as if Maki had asked, “but I’m not sure. I’ll have to double-check my schedule.”

“Er, yeah, of course,” said Maki. “Just let me know what you figure out.”

And on that note, Nico swept out of the cafe, leaving Maki slightly unsure what had just happened.

* * *

They met again a few times after that, always in public places, always with Nico in weird disguises. They chatted about their daily lives--well, Nico did, mostly; she was never short on things to say about the life of a real idol. She was planning a solo live; she was picking out what was going to go on her first album (well, mostly it was being picked out for her); she was doing photoshoots and arguing about the exact quantity of frills that her costume should have. Maki interjected the occasional cranky remark and then they'd fight for a bit before Nico went back to her monologue, but there was no real heat in any of it. It was just going through the motions. Somehow, their first brief conversation was still the most honest and personal one they'd had.

But they kept going, for some reason. Nico must be getting something out of it, though Maki couldn’t say what. And Maki... well, Maki hadn’t made a lot of friends in college, so she must just be pathetically lonely. There was no other explanation for her decision to spend her precious free time with _Nico_ , of all people. Even for nostalgia purposes, it was a weird choice.

One day, when the Tokyo summer weather was as nice as it was likely to get (i.e. not very, but a slight improvement in stickiness and/or raininess was better than nothing), Nico invited Maki to take a walk in the park. Which, who even _did_ that, at least among people their age? But Maki herself had started to run low on ideas of things to invite Nico to do, and anyway she had nothing better to do with her time besides study for a test she was sure she could ace in her sleep, so she went along.

They meandered along the paths for a bit, having the same inane conversations they’d been having, but Maki kept just barely catching movement out of the corner of her eye. Nico teased her for being twitchy, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.

Finally, she turned her head in time to catch a quick glimpse of a scruffy man, maybe in his thirties and with a truly unfortunate beard, just before he ducked behind a stand of trees.

“Don’t look now,” she said quietly to Nico, “but I think we’re being followed.”

“Is it a paparazzo?” Nico said, sounding sort of hopeful.

“I didn’t see a camera. He looked more like the type to try to get upskirts with his phone.”

“Oh, ew.”

“I know. So let’s lose him.”

“How?”

“I don’t know,” Maki admitted sheepishly. “It sounded good. They don’t give you classes on stalker avoidance in the idol industry, do they?”

“No,” said Nico. “So should we split up?”

“That would only work if he were after both of us, and I’m pretty sure that’s not the case.”

“Then... we run?”

“Maybe start by walking briskly,” Maki suggested. “We could aim for my place--it’s not far, and I don’t think we want to risk leading him back to where you live.”

“Ugh, definitely not.”

The guy followed them all the way out of the park and down a few streets, despite Maki’s efforts to make as many turns as possible. He was keeping well back, but not quite far enough to lose them around a corner, unfortunately.

“Maybe it would help if we went into a store?” Nico said.

“He’d just wait outside, probably.”

“I mean a big store, something with multiple exits and a lot of customers. We go in one way, come out another way, and if he follows us in, we try to lose him in the crowd.”

“Okay,” said Maki, who was kind of out of ideas. Completely out of ideas, to be honest.

They ducked into the first department store they came to, and, again on Nico’s suggestion, went straight up the escalators to the third floor, where they pretended to browse housewares for long enough, Maki hoped, to let the guy go off in a completely wrong direction. Before long, though, Nico got impatient, and practically dragged Maki down to the second floor.

Well, it was probably all right, Maki thought--the department store had seven floors, and he’d been far enough behind them that after their dash up the escalators, he had no way of knowing how high they’d gone. With any luck, he’d guessed wrong.

But then, as they were passing through Electronics, Maki spotted the stalker lurking by a display of computer accessories. Without thinking, she grabbed Nico and yanked her back against a shelf of cameras. Looking indignant, Nico opened her mouth to say something, then immediately shut it again. She _did_ have the ability to muster some common sense when necessary.

Maki waited several moments, her pulse thudding in her ears, and then risked peeking around the shelf. The guy had turned his back on Electronics and was heading into the CD section, but he was still closer than Maki would, ideally, like him to be.

“Okay,” she said, “ _now_ , I think, we run.”

They sprinted in the opposite direction from the stalker, towards the back of the store, down a set of stairs that Maki wasn’t entirely sure were meant to be used outside of emergencies (although no alarms went off when she opened the door to the stairwell, so it was probably fine), and out the back exit. They couldn’t maintain the pace for the several remaining blocks between them and Maki’s apartment, but by the time they got in the door they were still slightly out of breath and filled with adrenaline, which was the only way Maki could account for what happened next.

“We did it!” Nico said triumphantly.

“Yeah!” Maki said.

She’d been about to add, “If the idol thing doesn’t work out, you could have a career in espionage,” but before she could get very far, Nico flung her arms around Maki and kissed her. It was all over very quickly, but it was definitely not a friend sort of kiss.

Just as abruptly, Nico let go, and they stood there for a long moment, trying to avoid looking at each other.

“I’ll, uh.” Maki said. “I’ll go make some tea.”

Maki didn’t normally mind having a living/dining/kitchen setup--it wasn’t like she cooked much, or was capable of cooking anything very complicated, so the tiny kitchen area was more than enough--but in this particular case, the silence would have been less awkward if the kitchen had been an actual other room. Despite this handicap, Maki managed to look busy for the whole time the water was boiling, but once the tea was made and they were both sitting at the table with their cups, the void where conversation was supposed to be asserted itself again. She racked her brains for some kind of safe topic of conversation, but the more she thought about it, the more blank her mind seemed to become.

“You know, I miss μ's too,” Nico said suddenly.

“Huh?” said Maki, caught off guard.

“I mean, yes, I always did want to be a real idol, not just a school idol, but... back then we were writing our own songs, making our own costumes, deciding on the themes for our own performances. It was about _us_ , and who we were, you know? And now I've got a team of professionals doing all that for me, and of course they're very good at it, but I feel like to them I might as well be a dress-up doll.”

“That's too bad,” Maki said lamely.

“They're nice enough, but it's so impersonal. In μ's we were friends.” Nico looked sideways at Maki. “At least, I thought we were.”

Maki winced. “I really am sorry. I was busy, but... actually, I guess that was just an excuse I was making,” she said, realizing only as she said it that it was true. “To myself, anyway. It’s just--it was easier not to think about what I couldn’t have anymore. But I guess sooner or later I have to accept that things are never going to be like they were in high school.”

“Of course they’re not,” said Nico, “but maybe they’ll be even better.”

“I don’t think...” Maki began.

“You just got to kiss a cute and lovely soon-to-be-world-famous pop idol, after all,” Nico interjected, looking smug. “You didn’t do _that_ in high school, did you?”

“Oh, shut up,” said Maki.

* * *

The next day, they met again at the cafe they'd been to that first time. Maybe it was because of the setting that Maki had the irrational feeling that nothing had actually changed, that when Nico arrived they'd just go on having superficial and largely one-sided conversations as if last night hadn't happened. But as soon as Nico came in and sat down, it was obvious that something, at least, was different.

“No disguise today?” Maki asked.

Nico shrugged. “Well, it didn’t help much yesterday. I think I need a better way to keep from drawing attention. Like hiding in plain sight.”

“And you’re not worried about the media?”

“Why should I be? I’m not doing anything scandalous. Just getting coffee with an old friend.” She took Maki’s hand under the table and grinned mischievously. “As far as they know.”


End file.
